The Globe, while cruising alone before meeting the Rossie, had a stirring time with the British letter-of-marque Boyd. It was on July 31st, and there was a gale blowing when the Globe began the chase. It was three hours before she got within range. Then she opened the combat with her Long Tom amidships—a gun that could throw accurately a nine-pound, round, cast-iron ball to a distance of, perhaps, half a mile—a long nine, in short. The Boyd replied with two long nines, but fired wildly, and the Globe was able to range up where her short guns could bear. There were four of these on a side. The enemy carried two more guns than the Globe, and worked them vigorously until the Globe ranged up where muskets were used. Then the Boyd struck. The kind of marksmanship exhibited is shown by the fact that no one was hurt on either vessel. The Boyd was sent in. On August 14th the Globe captured a schooner of four guns, loaded with mahogany, and a few days thereafter brought to Hampton Roads “a large British ship carrying twenty-two guns, richly laden, which she captured not far from the Bermudas.”
Reports that give the values of some of the “richly laden” ships are by no means lacking. The privateer Paul Jones, Captain Hazard, of New York, before August 1st had captured fourteen British vessels in the West Indies, and early in August took the Hassan, bound from Gibraltar to Havana, “with wines and dry-goods, valued at $200,000.” The Hassan carried fourteen guns, but only twenty men. She held out for half an hour. About the same time Captain Thomas Boyle, of the Baltimore clipper Comet, captured the Hopewell, from Surinam for London. She was valued at $150,000. To this prize Captain Boyle added “the first-class British ship Henry, four hundred tons burden, coppered to the bends, mounting four twelve-pounders, and six six-pounders, bound from St. Croix for London,” with seven hundred hogsheads of sugar, and thirteen pipes of old Madeira wine; this vessel and cargo produced a clear profit to the captors of more than $100,000. A little later, the Saratoga, of New York, Captain Riker, captured the Quebec, from Jamaica, and she was valued at $300,000. She was armed with sixteen guns, and carried a crew of fifty-two. And then there was the ship Richmond, of fourteen guns, and twenty-five men before the mast, “eight hundred tons burden, deeply laden with West India produce, worth $200,000,” that was taken by the privateer Thomas, and sent into Portsmouth.
While the privateers were out for the property they could capture, their deeds were by no means untempered with generosity. The Benjamin Franklin, Captain Ingersoll, of New York, took the Industry, valued at $2,000, and brought her in. But on learning that she was the sole property of a widow, the owner of the privateer delivered her over to her captain.
It should not be inferred from these facts that all the privateers prospered, or even that they generally did so. Privateering was quite as much of a lottery as speculation in gold mines. In the first place, a privateer cost a good deal of money, for that day. The Governor Tompkins cost $20,000. Under Captain Joseph Shumer she carried a crew of one hundred and forty-three men with fourteen guns. Shumer captured twenty vessels. She was then sold at auction for $14,500, and under a new captain tried cruising but never made another capture. The port of New York boasted of one hundred and twenty privateers during this war. The Scourge, of nine guns and one hundred and ten men, took twenty-seven prizes. The Saratoga, of sixteen guns and one hundred and forty men, took twenty-two prizes. The Prince de Neufchâtel, Captain J. Ordronaux, with seventeen guns and one hundred and twenty-seven men, took eighteen prizes. The Divided We Fall, with but three guns and fifty men, took sixteen prizes, while her sister ship, United We Stand, got but one. Of the whole one hundred and twenty, only forty-one got any prizes at all, and of the forty-one, seven got but one prize each, and eleven but two. When court fees and duties on the goods captured had been paid there was so little left for the privateers and their crews that the ships capturing only two prizes really made nothing for the owners. Only about one privateer in five, sailing out of the port of New York, paid a cent of profit to the owners. Many were lost altogether—were captured by the enemy, and these were lost because the militia crews, like shore militia, became panic-stricken at an inopportune time.
After recalling the fact that the London Times said in March, 1813, that the Yankee privateers had captured five hundred British ships in seven months, the story of the doings of these mosquitoes during 1812 may very well conclude with the accounts of two battles off the South American coast in the month of December of that year. The first was that between the American brig Montgomery, Captain Upton, of Boston, and the British war-brig Surinam, mounting guns common to such brigs—eighteen short thirty-twos and two long nines—a better armament, in fact, than the Peacock had when defeated by the Hornet, for the Peacock had twenty-fours instead of thirty-twos. On December 6th the Montgomery got alongside of the Surinam by mistake, and, although armed with but ten six-pounders and two short eighteens, she remained there for half an hour, when the Surinam was glad to let her go. The Surinam threw 297 pounds of metal at a broadside, or eighteen pounds more than the Hornet threw in fighting the Peacock. The Montgomery threw 48 pounds of metal at a broadside—allowing that the American shot were of full weight.
Battle between the Schooner Saratoga and the Brig Rachel.
From a lithograph in Coggeshall’s “Privateers.”
The facts above given are taken from Coggeshall’s “History of the American Privateers,” written in 1856. The author, who was himself a vigorous captain in the privateer service, ends his account of this fight by quoting a stanza of what was a favorite song with the British tars before that war:
Britannia needs no bulwarks,